Subject: Bunting alert!!
Date: Aug 31 19:44:51 1995
From: Jack Bowling - jcbowling at mindlink.bc.ca


Tweets - Came home around noon today and flushed a small bird from the
side of the house. Got about a three minute look at it from as close
as ten feet, at times through bins, before it took off. Description
follows:

All feathers fresh with no apparent damage. Slightly smaller than
Lapland or Smith's Longspurs with tail shorter than body length.
Striking Clay-coloured sparrow-type of darker cheek patch but with a
conspicuous caramel or pale ochre wash over lores. Cheek patch
bordered above and below by creamy stripes. Rufous brownish stripe
above pale superciliary line. Suggestion of slightly paler median
crown stripe. Dark eye. Small, darkish, bill with curved seed-cracking
type of culmen, not your pipit type of straight bill. Perhaps a darker
malar streak but not seen well. Underparts creamy white with necklace
of long chestnut streaks across breast, extending to belly on sides.
Streaks diffused rather than overly sharp, widest on the breast.
Dorsum the typical longspur admixture of grays, browns and blacks with
rufous edgings. Conspicuous butterscotch-hazel streaks, possibly edged
in black, running from the "shoulders" along each side of mantle to
rump. Tail dark with possible white edging. Legs not seen well but
seemed neutral or dark-coloured rather than conspicuously pale. Walked
rather than hopped.

Best match I could find in my reference books was a female Com. Reed
Bunting _Emberiza shoeniclus_ in Jonsson. However, could not rule out
for sure the Little Bunting _E. pusilla_. Did not have the punk hairdo
of the Rustic Bunting, rather the bird was noticeably round-headed.
Com. Reed Bunting (also spelled Com. Reed-Bunting) is listed as
species 870 in the AOU Checklist of N. American Birds, with records
from Alaska. This will have to go down as just an Old World bunting
due to the lack of confidence in the identification. Perhaps someone
has some experience with the palearctic buntings which they could
share. Stuart? Needless to say, heads up in those grass patches just
in case this was a flight involving more than a single bird.

- Jack



Jack Bowling
Prince George, BC
CANADA
jcbowling at mindlink.bc.ca